In years to come, it will
be interesting to read in history books what role the Internet played in the handling of
the whole Kristina disaster.

Gone are the days when
politicians could control the media. With an army of Internet-savvy people with
video cameras and Internet access, anybody who wants to dig can find pretty much anything.

I just finished watching the tale of Charlene Neville of The Charlene Neville Band in New Orleans.
She tells of her harrowing ordeal--of alligators eating people, of dead babies
floating in the streets, of men breaking into homes and raping women. Stories that
haven't made it to NBC or CNN (though this film clip is from a TV station in Baton
Rouge. I discovered the clip won't play on firefox, but will play in Internet
Explorer).

Clip after clip after clip
of scenes that will bring you to tears, many of which have been shown on major
media, such as the emotional
video of Geraldo Rivera and Shepherd Smith at the Convention Center, reporting for FOX
news. I downloaded this clip when I found it, and when I went back to put a link to
it, the clip was gone. I don't know if that removal was accidental or deliberate, so
I uploaded my copy to YouTube,
which seems to be rather cavalier about copyrighted material posted by people who don't
own the copyright. I feel bad about posting copyrighted material, but I felt that
the situation warranted it.

(As someone commented,
after seeing the video, "If they are saying that on rightwing nutball shows
like Hannity and Coombs, you know shit's gonna get worse.")

There are also the
wonderful sound bytes from major television programs, like Meet the Press...

Senator Mary Landrieu
flying over the devastation and talking with
George Stephanopolous.

Jefferson Parish
President Aaron Broussard's emotional account
of the death of the mother of the man who's responsible for emergency management in his
building.

New York Times
columnist David Brooks' (a frequent supporter of the president) condemnation
of Bush.

I have nothing but praise
for the people who are down there in New Orleans, up to their tuchas in toxic waste,
trying to alleviate the misery of the people, trying to find a way to move them out to
somewhere clean and safe, doing the Herculean work of bringing aid and comfort, working
long hours without sleep. I have nothing but praise for the people in helicopters
who have rescued thousands of stranded people from porches or rooftops, or people in boats
who are roaming the flooded streets looking for survivors.

I have no praise at all
for those in authority who dragged their feet, for a president who didn't even mention the
disaster until two days after it happened, and didn't get his butt down there until it was
safe to take a photo hugging a black child, for a vice president who seems to have
disappeared (it's rumored he's vacationing in Wyoming), for a FEMA director who
"didn't know" that help was needed until Thursday, when all you had to
do was turn on any television station to see that the situation was critical.

(And what is the FEMA
director's background to make him fit for his job? He ran for Congress in
1988 and won 27 percent of the vote against Democratic incumbent Glenn English. He spent
the 1990s as judges and stewards commissioner of the International Arabian Horse
Association. His job was to ensure that horse-show judges followed the rules and to
investigate allegations against those suspected of cheating. [He was also asked to
resign from this job after a number of lawsuits alleging supervision failures.] This
is the man Bush has put in charge of crisis management throughout the United States--and
we see how effective he has been! Oh--but Bush says he's doing "a heck of a job."

An exchange between brown and Ted Koppel on ABC's Nightline:

Brown: "The people in the convention center are being fed; the
people on the bridges are being provided with water. ..."

Koppel: "With all due respect, sir, the people, the people in the
convention center are not being fed. Our reporters. ..."

Brown: "I misspoke. The people in the, the people in the Superdome.
I'm sorry, you're absolutely correct. We're getting the supplies to the convention center
now. But the people in the Superdome have been being fed, that supply chain has been
working, and that has been moving along and those evacuations have been continuous."

Does the man even WATCH television?????)

If there is any positive
spin to be put on this whole debacle it is that the criticism of the administration and
its departments seems to be bi-partisan. There are as many Republicans crying for
something to be done as there are Democrats.

Already there is spin
coming out--Bush has "leaped into action" directing every single department to
do everything they can to help people in need. Glad he finally realized that this is
needed.

Nice. But a week
late, isn't it? How many more lives would have been saved if he had "leaped
into action" on the first day, instead of waiting nearly a week?

"So long as any life
is in danger, we have work to do," Bush said. Yeah? So why did take him 2
days to acknowledge the crisis? Why did it take a week for him to "leap into
action"? He said yesterday that he had gone back into the area to let people
know that "there's a lot of work to be done." Like they didn't know
already?

Perhaps this will be the
moment that defines the Bush presidency and is his legacy to try to live with--the thought
of alligators munching on dead babies in the toxic swill of what was once the streets of
New Orleans--for the rest of his life.

Whatever is the aftermath
of Katrina, whatever happy face spin the administration is going to put on it to try to
whitewash their role in the deaths of thousands of people along the Gulf Coast, at least
they won't be able to hide from the truth, because the truth is out there all over the
Internet, vloggers in the trenches speaking with the affected people, filming the
deplorable conditions, getting first hand accounts of how many people died at their feet
or how they have begged for water for five days before it actually arrived.

PHOTO OF THE DAY

It was just about a year ago when I was introduced to "The Bird Tree."I miss it.